mooreeffoc

pronunciation | moor-‘Ef-ok (moor-EEF-ock)from Tolkien’s “On Fairy Stories” | Mooreeffoc is a fantastic word… It is Coffee-room, viewed from the inside through a glass door… [It] may cause you suddenly to realize that England is an utterly alien land, lost either in some remote past age glimpsed by history, or in some strange dim future to be reached only by a time-machine; to see the amazing oddity and interest of its inhabitants and their customs and feeding-habits.

I have to ask, you know, because it keeps bugging me: why is your blogtitle 'coffeeroom' backwards? <3

Hi ♥♥

And yeah Moreffooc is just Coffee room backwards but it has an interesting story in my opinion.

Short Answer: It’s a word used by Chesterton to denote the queerness of things that have become trite, when they are seen suddenly from a new angle.

Long Answer:

Moreffooc was first mentioned by Charles Dickens in his own autobiography. One time he was walking past this coofee shop he used to visit everyday, and looked up at the glass sign from the inside and saw moor eeffoc. Of course, he attributed profound significance to this apparently insignificant realization, and he related it to our ability to gain new perspective on familiar things that have become boring because of time or use.

GK Chesterton rescued the invented term in an essay (referring to Dickens), saying that the best fiction (or fantasy) relies on the new perspectives we can find on ordinary stuff.

Tolkien mentioned it again in “On fairy Stories” (highly recommend it) and continued saying that familiar things are the hardest to view from different points, for we gain a sense of possession about them due to frequent contact.

He applied the term to his own writing, saying that Fantasy should be seen as a way to renovate and refresh our “real” world. According to him, it’s thanks to Fantasy that we can appreciate and find the awesomeness of “real life”.

And you can see a lot of this idea (and his love for simple things, hobbits and happiness, blah blah), on Tolkien’s writing!

And I love the idea of Fantasy and fiction as a way to re-discover the world and all the things that are on it.